


The Girl from the Stars

by TwinTerrors



Series: Sometimes, You Just Need to Flip Things Around [1]
Category: DCU (Comics), Supergirl (Comics), Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, destruction of a planet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 21:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17128751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinTerrors/pseuds/TwinTerrors
Summary: Kara Zor-El is sent to Earth as her planet is destroyed, accompanied only by her infant cousin, Kal. However, when she arrives, Kal is nowhere to be found, and she has no idea what to do.





	1. Arrival

When Kara Zor-El opened her eyes for the first time on a different planet, she found herself faced with blinking alerts on the dashboard of her pod.

 _That can’t be good,_  she thought, sitting up.

A quick perusal of the alerts indicated that she had reached her target, the planet Sol 3 with its distinctive yellow sun. However, she continued reading, there had been some difficulty with the AI as it entered the atmosphere, causing her landing to be...less than smooth.

The malfunctioning AI had apparently not only failed to properly shut down the stasis field within the pod, leaving her to wake up once the system was damaged on impact (and she shuddered to think what might have happened if it hadn’t), but had also miscalculated the landing trajectory, resulting in damage to some of the pod’s mechanics. Which led to her current trouble: the opening mechanism was broken. The hatch in the top of the ship only opened about an inch before jamming and refusing to budge.

Frustration rising, she had to stop and take a deep breath. She had no idea how long it had been since she closed her eyes that last time, how long she spent flying through space, and it was even possible the computer is wrong, that she didn’t make it to Sol 3, that she was going to die the moment she stepped outside her pod, just like her mother and father and aunts and uncles and her friend Kon from school and -

 _No._ She had to keep calm. She had to get out. Her family used some of their precious last minutes together to charge her with the protection of her newborn cousin Kal. She needed to find him. She needed _out of this stupid broken ship_ -

She slammed her fist against the jammed hatch and, to her shock, left a large dent in the frame. Kara froze.

 _Did I do that?_ she wondered, looking down at her fist. But then she noticed the sliver of yellow light that had entered the pod through the slit of the hatch, and remembered what her uncle had told her right before she left.

_“We’re sending you to Sol 3,” Uncle Jor had explained as he and Aunt Lara finished readying the pods for departure. “It’s a planet very far away from here. It’s air is breathable, with acceptable concentrations of carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is a bit on the low side for helium and carbon monoxide, but the two of you should be fine.”_

_“Focus Jor,” Aunt Lara cut in, frowning at the screen where she was finishing setting up the AI for Kal’s pod._

_“Right, of course. Anyway, Sol 3 is primarily inhabited by humans, a species externally remarkably similar in appearance to Kryptonians, although they-”_

_“Jor,” Aunt Lara cut in, this time much more sharply. “We’re almost out of time.” Her eyes hadn’t left the screen of her pad, but her typing had gotten much sharper, as if she was also reminding herself of their looming deadline._

_“Right,” Jor murmured, his gaze going distant for a moment as his face sagged with regret, before he quickly focused on Kara’s face again. “Sol 3 has a yellow sun, not a red sun like we have. In addition to the obvious difference in appearance based on this difference in wavelengths and intensities of the associated radiation, it has a profound effect on Kryptonian physiology. Specifically, it supercharges our-”_

_“Jor, Kara is a child, she hasn’t studied anything beyond basic anatomy, she’s not going to understand, and you don’t have time to teach her anyway, just tell her what to expect.”_

_“Yes, okay. Well, exposure to light from a yellow sun will give you abilities, Kara. You will become stronger, faster, more durable, able to sense more than normal, and some say it even grants the power of flight! And who knows what extended exposure will do, much less during development… anyway, you will need to adjust to these changes quickly so you can blend in among the humans. Xenologists haven’t visited, but surveillance has indicated that they seem to be dreadfully xenophobic, even just within their own species. I shudder to think of how they might react to meeting someone not of their own planet. You will be able to learn their language quickly with the help of the yellow sun radiation, but you must not allow them to discover that you are not like them.”_

_“I understand,” Kara murmured. All this talk of strange planets was confusing, and the worried way her aunt and uncle kept looking at the timer ticking down in the center of their lab was unnerving her. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, it was counting down to, or even why they were sending her to Sol 3, but she could tell that it was not a game, not even a test. This was deadly serious._

_The doors to the lab slid open, revealing her mother standing outside with the same serious expression as her aunt and uncle._

_“It’s time.”_

 

 _The yellow sun_ , Kara thought. _I didn’t expect to experience the effects so immediately._

Kara rested her palms deliberately against the hatch. She took a deep breath of the alien, nitrogen-rich air, then began to push.

Gradually, the hatch began to crumple outwards, until suddenly something within the mechanism gave way, the hatch breaking away from the body of the ship with a resounding crack and falling to the ground below. Kara immediately climbed through the hole in the pod, eager to get her first glimpse of the strange planet and escape her thoughts of her family-

_“Kara,” her mother called her attention back from where she had been watching the pods move into position on the launch pad. “Kara, my daughter.”_

_“Mother,” Kara replied. Her mother’s strange behavior was doing nothing to calm the growing unease in her stomach. The same timer was also displayed here, in the launch bay. Whatever event the countdown was heralding was fast approaching, as the numbers slid ever lower._

_“Kara,” her mother started again. “Our planet is in trouble. Our people have been using more and more energy, and we’ve resorted to...unorthodox methods to keep up with that demand. So we drilled down into the planet’s core in an effort to draw on...regardless, this caused irreparable damage to our planet’s geology. The damage is so extreme that before too much longer, Krypton will shatter into pieces.”_

_Kara was horrified, but she didn’t understand what that had to do with anything they were doing now. Her confusion must have shown on her face, because her mother took a deep breath before continuing to explain._

_“Everyone on Krypton is going to die when that happens.”_

_That much Kara could understand. She felt her eyes widen as it fully dawned on her what was going to happen to her and her family and friends, everyone she knew-_

_“No, no, shhh, Kara, you can’t worry about that now,” her mother tried to soothe her, but Kara twisted away from her embrace, stumbling a half step away. She couldn’t see any way that could be-_

_She suddenly remembered the pods and froze in realization._

_“The pods…”_

_“Yes, Kara,” her mother smiled proudly. “You and baby Kal are going to escape in the pods.”_

_“And you and Father and Uncle Jor and Aunt Lara will be right behind us?” Kara insisted, desperately hoping her mother would respond with an ‘of course,’ and tell her that everything was going to be alright, but somehow she could already tell that that would not be happening._

_“Kara, I need you to take care of Kal when you get to Earth.”_

_“But Mother-”_

_“Kara. It will be just the two of you on a strange planet full of people hostile to those different from them, especially if they don’t understand them. I need you to promise me that you will do your best to look after your cousin.”_

_“I. I promise, Mother,” Kara whispered, voice hoarse as she tried to keep herself from crying._

_Her mother smiled at her then and pulled Kara against her, wrapping her in a tight hug._

_“I am proud of you, my brave little Kara Zor-El, daughter of Krypton. Do not forget us. Do not forget who you are, or where you come from.”_

_“I won’t,” Kara promised, clinging tightly to her mother. “I won’t forget.”_

Kara blinked hard in the newly-revealed sunlight, refusing to let the tears escape her eyes. She had a promise to keep. She had to find Kal.

A quick glance around from where she stood on top of the wreck of her ship showed no sign of her cousin, or of anyone else for that matter. Only a sea of green, leafy stalks blocking her view in every direction, interrupted by the deep furrow cut into the soil behind her pod. The AI must have managed to control her descent at least somewhat, which explained how she had survived.

She slid carefully down the crumpled side of the pod and began to walk, deciding to follow a path between the unnaturally straight rows of stalks. Her first priority would be finding her cousin, but since she had no idea how to achieve that, she would settle for finding food or shelter.

She continued for a while, examining the green stalks as she passed with some interest. She decided she must be in some sort of agricultural center based on their unnaturally regular spacing and homogeneity, but without knowing what the plants were, had no way of figuring out why they were being cultivated. Did the humans use them for food? Or was there some organic product derived from the plants that the humans needed?

Kara remembered visiting Jor and Lara at the Science Institute a number of times with her parents. She had seen a number of different plants touring the labs, even several from other systems living in special environmental pods, but nothing quite like these.

She supposed the green color was intended to maximize the absorption of sunlight, in a process similar to what her own cells must currently be undergoing. However, without any further cues and no equipment, she had no way of learning much more about these plants. She would just have to wait until she could talk to a human then. The rows had to come to an end eventually, and hopefully there would be someone there who could help her.


	2. Human

When the row of stalks finally ended, Kara emerged into full sunlight. Directly in front of her was a white structure, with strange, overlapping beams along the sides and a dark, scaly roof. She didn’t recognize the materials it was made from, but if she squinted she could make out a grainy fabric to the materia on the side of the building, something that almost made her think it was biological in origin, which was plainly ridiculous. Who would use organic matter as a building material?

There was also a shiny wheeled vehicle with a large open back compartment sitting adjacent to the structure, likely intended for transporting cargo. A larger red structure made with what looked like the same materials lay a good distance to the right. She could smell that one from where she stood, and resolved to avoid whatever creature or creatures lived inside.

The white structure would likely be where the humans who had been cultivating the fields lived, then. Maybe they had seen her cousin’s ship land.

“Hello!” Kara shouted, waving her hands in the air. “Is anyone there? I’m sorry for crushing the plants. Have you seen my cousin’s pod?”

As she listened, she got no response, but there was what sounded like footsteps, a strange clicking noise, and then a loud clang from inside the white structure. That must mean there was someone inside, an assumption backed up by the continued rustling she could hear, so Kara decided to yell louder to make sure she had the human’s attention.

“Hello! My name is Kara Zor-El!”

Finally, a human emerged from the house. Jor had been right, they did look a lot like a Kryptonian, with long brown hair tied back in a band, not unlike the ones Kara favored. The human was wearing stiff blue pants and a soft shirt dyed with irregular, colorful patterns, and carried a long metal device in their hands.

After a moment, Kara realized that the device looked kind of like the guns she had seen security officers carrying at the justice center when she went to visit her mother. Maybe the human had grabbed a weapon. They might have been upset about the damage to their crops, after all.

“Are you upset about your plants? I said I’m sorry for crushing them, but I wasn’t awake yet so there wasn’t really anything I could do.”

The human shouted something, but Kara couldn’t understand any of it. Kara was confused for a moment, but then decided that the human was probably trying to communicate with her in their own language. Regardless, she decided to try talking to the human again.

“I promise not to destroy any more of your plants, but can you help me find my cousin? He should have arrived around the same time that I did, probably not too far from where I landed,” she gestured broadly back the way she had come, before realizing that her pod was no longer visible from here. “Well, you can’t see it exactly, but that’s where my ship crashed. Hopefully his pod’s AI managed to navigate your planet’s atmosphere better than mine did.”

The human was shouting again, but this time Kara was able to pick out individual sounds more clearly, could hear the anger and fear in the words. They were still completely incomprehensible though, bearing little resemblance to Kryptonian or even-

“Interlac!” Kara shouted. Of course the human wouldn’t understand her, she had been speaking Kryptonian! She needed to try communicating again, this time remembering to speak in Interlac so the human can understand!

However, before she could say anything, the human made a very frightened squeak, causing Kara to refocus on the human than on her own language trouble. She tried to figure out what the human was looking at so intently, but realized that the human was staring at her. No, more specifically, the human was staring at-her feet?

Kara looked down. And promptly let out a matching screech.

“My feet aren’t touching the ground!” Kara squawked. “What’s happening?”

Her panic was interrupted by a loud, piercing sound from the direction where the human was standing, but before Kara could look back over to see what had caused it she felt a sharp sting on her abdomen.

“Ow!” Kara yelped, clutching her stomach. _What was that?!_

She frowned, looking down at herself. When she didn’t see anything that could have caused the pain, she turned her search toward the ground, quickly finding the likely culprit: a small, crumpled chip of metal in the dirt beneath her feet.

Kara tried to imagine herself standing on the ground. This did not accomplish anything. She tried wiggling to push herself closer to the ground. This also did not work. Finally, she tried imagining herself moving downward. Thankfully, imagination quickly turned to reality, and she felt herself lower.

When she was close enough, she bent over and picked the chip up, examining it. It would have taken quite a lot of force for the metal to deform like that, especially since she was stationary at the time. So where could it have come from? The answer occurred to her almost immediately: the security device the human was holding. It must fire these small metal projectiles at high velocities, likely powered by some manner of explosive contained within the tube, from the sound of it. Effective, if a bit inefficient and dangerous.

Then it occurred to her that this thing had slammed into her and done no more damage than an mild, if sharp, poke to the stomach.

 _Yellow sun, huh_ , Kara thought, wondering just how much kinetic energy she must have absorbed from that chip, without any more ill effect than a possible bruise. _Definitely couldn’t have done that back home._

The thought of home reminded her why she was here, and what she was supposed to be doing. Instead of trying to set her feet back on the ground, she focused on where she wanted to go, and was relieved when she drifted toward the human on the structure, gaining both speed and steadiness along the way.

The human had let the barrel of their device drop toward the ground, likely in surprise at Kara’s lack of reaction to being hit. Their mouth was hanging wide in what Kara decided must be the universal expression for shock.

After a moment’s consideration, Kara held out the deformed metal projectile, in case the human wanted to try to repair it for reuse. Then, she tries to talk to them again, this time remembering to try to use Interlac instead of Kryptonian.

“Um, fair greetings, Human of Sol 3. I am Kara Zor-El of Krypton. My ship has crashed over there,” she gestured to the field she had emerged from, “and I search for, um, my father-brother-son, who was supposed to arrive with me. Um,” she paused, something horrible occurring to her, “are we on the planet Sol 3? My AI did not function, uh, correctly, which caused, uh, my crashing here, so it is possible that I am on the wrong planet. But the problem had to do with, um, landing, not navigating. Could you please tell me if I am on Sol 3?”

The human showed no signs of comprehension. In fact, they looked more confused. They continued to stare at Kara, who was still hovering about a foot above the ground on the other side of the railing along the edge of the white structure. In fact, she remembered that she was still holding out the crumpled projectile.

Kara awkwardly extended that arm a bit more towards the human, who seemed to actually notice it this time. They hesitantly reached out and took the chip of metal from her hand. Their eyes widened as they examined its remains before turning back to Kara.

“Human?” the human repeated.

“Yes! You are a human? Does that mean that this planet Sol 3?” At the human’s continued confusion, Kara was forced to conclude that the human must not speak Interlac after all. Which, upon reflection, made sense; Kara was reminded of how Jor had warned her about humans and their xenophobia. The language barrier was going to be an issue, but for now, there were still more important matters to deal with.

“Actually,” Kara turned around and gestured for the human to follow her as she floated back toward the field, calling out, “I’ll show you my pod, and you can tell me if you have seen anything like it.”

After a moment, the human descended the steps on the front of the structure and walked after Kara as she re-entered the field. They continued in silence for a moment before the human started speaking again, this time recognizably a question.

“Do you even recognize Interlac? I am not familiar with whatever language you are speaking,” Kara responded.

The human spoke again, another question. Kara was starting to recognize patterns within their speech; these were likely words the human was using repeatedly.

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Kara sighed, switching back to Kryptonian. There was no point in continuing to struggle through with Interlac if the human didn’t understand either. “Well, I’ll just have to learn your human language then. Or maybe you’ll learn Kryptonian.”

Once again, the human spoke. A statement, this time. They sounded frustrated with Kara, probably at her lack of response to the previous questions.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m frustrated too,” she grumbled under her breath.

At that, the human turned sharply toward Kara, then kind of smiled and snorted a laugh.

“Oh now you understand me,” Kara muttered, but found herself smiling too. It was funny that the two of them, despite not being able to understand a single word the other spoke, could share the same feeling.

They chattered at each other for another minute as they continued through the field, not really understanding much beyond the basic emotions behind the words. Interestingly enough, Kara found that she was recognizing more and more repeated morphemes, and could almost start to guess what some of their syntactic functions might be.

She was confused about that, actually: how was she picking up on that so easily? It certainly hadn’t worked like that while she was trying to learn Interlac. Then she remembered how Jor El had talked about the abilities exposure to a yellow sun would grant her, and how he predicted rapid language acquisition as a potential effect. She supposed that would explain it, especially considering the other effects that had already manifested.

Several minutes later, they emerged from the stalks at the site where her ship had landed. The human stopped abruptly, eyes going huge and mouth hanging wide.

“Sorry!” Kara said quickly, assuming the human was shocked to see the destruction of their plants. “I didn’t mean to destroy your crops! I was supposed to just land gently on the surface, but like I said, there was a problem with the AI…” she trailed off when she realized the human was not reacting to her at all.

“Are you okay?” Kara said a little louder. Still no response.

Kara carefully reached out and gingerly touched the human’s shoulder with her first finger. The human jolted, spinning to look at Kara. Kara waved her hand a bit to make sure she had the human’s attention before trying again.

“I’m really sorry about your crops, but I need your help. Have you seen another ship like this anywhere near here? My cousin was supposed to land at the same time as me, but I haven’t been able to find any sign of him or his pod.”

The human was still looking alarmed as they stared at Kara. Assuming this meant they didn’t understand what she was saying again, she decided to try a different tactic.

“See this?” She pointed at the wreckage. “I came here in that.” She jabbed a finger from her other hand at her face. “But there were two of us.” She held up a second finger on the hand that was pointing at the pod, and made a sweeping gesture around herself. “I need to find the second pod. Can you help me?”

Kara wasn’t sure if they understood her, but the human was now frowning up at her instead of looking shocked. After another second, the human seemed to figure out at least some of what Kara was asking her, and shook their head, mouth turned down into a frown, a gesture that Kara took to mean that they hadn’t seen another pod.

Kara huffed in frustration, scrunching up her face. She was working on a plan to try to fly higher in order to be able to see above the tall stalks of the plants in the field in hopes of catching a glimpse of her cousin’s impact site, but was distracted when the human spoke up.

“Martha,” they said slowly, pointing at their face.

She frowned. That sounded like only one word this time.

“Martha,” they repeated, a bit more forcefully, tapping on their chest.

 _Oh_ , Kara realized, eyes widening. _Not a word. A_ **_name_**.

“Martha,” she tried, pointing at the human. The name felt odd on her tongue, the middle sound in particular harsh against the roof of her mouth. But it was the first word on this strange planet that she had understood, and the first one she had been able to speak, so she firmly emblazoned it into her memory.

The human-- _Martha_ \--nodded, responding with a longer string of words, but this time Kara was able to pick out the name ‘Martha’ at the end. Then, they looked at Kara as if expecting her to say or do something. After a second, Kara realized they must be expecting her to introduce herself too.

“Kara,” she said, pointing to herself in the same way Martha had done earlier.

“Kara,” Martha repeated instantly, almost startlingly her.

 _Well okay then_ , thought Kara. _That much at least went well_.

Martha cast one last look at the wreck, then turned back toward the way they had come and gestured for Kara to follow them this time. Seeing no further reason to stay with was left of the pod, Kara turned and floated after them, listening carefully as Martha resumed chattering. If she paid attention to the emotions in Martha’s voice, and what they were gesturing at, she thought she could almost figure out some of what they meant.


	3. Home

_Sandwich_ , Kara repeated mentally, taking a cautious bite of the strange food Martha had assembled and presented to her. It consisted of two thin slices of some type of grain pastry, with an unfamiliar cooked meat and several different vegetable slices in between. It was an odd creation,she thought as she chewed, but surprisingly tasty. Almost intensely so. She swallowed, and took another bite, this time much more confidently.

Across the table, Martha took another bite out of their own sandwich. They seemed to be enjoying Kara’s reaction to the new food. Kara felt like she should probably be bothered by that, but since she was enjoying her own reaction to the new food as well, she didn’t get too upset.

Martha finished their sandwich before Kara got to her fourth bite, but as they were standing up to put away their plate (Kara hadn’t seen any sign of automatons to run the house, or even a household AI, but couldn’t tell if this was a result of their location in a rural agricultural region or the general level of technology on Sol 3) a second human walked inside. Their hair was shorter and darker in color, and they wore a different type of shirt, brownish red with dark green and yellow stripes at right angles instead of the soft mix of colors that characterized Martha’s, and a line of hard fasteners down the front from the folded collar to where it was tucked into his pants.

The second human seemed rather confused by Kara’s presence in the kitchen. They said something to Martha, who responded. Unfortunately, Kara had more trouble deciphering their emotions and intentions while they were looking at each other rather than at her and thus couldn’t understand anything of their continuing exchange..

She did eventually gather that the two were talking about her, as both Martha and the other human frequently glanced her way, and once the second human even pointed at her. They sounded upset; Kara would almost describe their tone as angry. Martha, on the other hand, remained calm, repeating something over and over throughout the conversation, but that did not seem to convince the other human.

Then the other human finished talking and turned to face Kara. Now that she could see their face, it was clear that they were, in fact, angry. However, the dominant emotion on their face was even clearer: fear. Kara frowned, trying to think what they might be scared of. Then it occurred to her.

 _Oh. They’re scared of_ **_me_** _._

Kara stood up, careful to keep both feet firmly on the ground and not to push off into the air again. She carefully walked over towards the pair of humans. Martha looked a bit confused, but the other human was looking less angry and more scared with every step she took.

Kara frowned again. The whole point of this was to make them less scared of her. But she had already committed to her path, and turning back now wasn’t going to help anything.

“Hello,” she tried in Interlac. “My name is Kara Zor-El. I’m from Krypton. And I mean you no harm.”

“Kara,” Martha repeated, and then smiled at her.

Kara smiled back. “Kara,” she confirmed, pointing at herself. Then, pointing at Martha, “Martha.”

She then directs her attention back to the unknown human, who is staring back at her in something like shock. They are no longer afraid, possibly have forgotten to be, but the longer they stare at her, the more the emotions on their face shift from shock to something else. Maybe wonder? Whatever it is, it is definitely an improvement over the anger and fear from earlier.

They stood there for a moment longer, until Martha jabbed their elbow into the other human’s abdomen. The human startled slightly, then quickly recovered, looking back at Kara and pointing to themself.

“Jon,” they said, slowly, as if they were trying to make sure that Kara understood.

She nodded, keeping her snickering to herself. (Of course she understood, now that she was picking up on it, their language really did have a lot in common with Interlac, and Jon was even a Kryptonian name!)

“Jon,” she repeated confidently, pointing back at them.

Jon smiled down at her, nodding, and then pointed at her, asking, “Kara?”

“Kara,” she confirmed, pointing at herself. She was glad that she had been able to calm things down with Jon, she didn’t want to start any trouble with the humans. All she wanted was to find her cousin.

Reminded of her mission, she started talking again.

“Hey,” she called out, drawing their attention back to her from where they had started talking to each other, much more calmly this time. “Have you seen a second ship? Like mine?” She looked at Martha, pointing toward where they had walked to find her wreck of a pod, then held up two fingers and made a sweeping gesture to try to show that she didn’t know where it was.

At Jon’s confused expression, Martha seemed to explain, pointing at the field the same as Kara had even. Then they responded as they shook their head, still looking a little confused but now sad too. Kara could tell that they hadn’t misunderstood, they both knew what she was looking for now. They just had no idea how to help her.

This was so unfair. She was alone on a strange planet, where they apparently didn’t even speak Interlac, and she couldn’t find the one other person who had come with her. Not that Kal would have been able to help her any, being an infant and all, but she had hoped that maybe his pod hadn’t been damaged. Then maybe she would have access to a working AI, maybe they could use it to look for other survivors, to translate, or anything! Anything besides being stuck here, without her parents…

Her parents…

She felt herself start to shake. No, she couldn’t, not yet, she needed to find Kal, needed to…

Then, her eyes started watering and her breathing hitched. _No, no, no, no,_ **_no_** _!_

Kara sobbed.

Her parents were dead. Everyone she knew was dead. Her teachers, her friends, Jor and Lara, everyone. They were gone, the planet was nearly imploding when her parents sent her away in that pod, sent her away to preserve their people, and she couldn’t even find her stupid baby cousin, couldn’t even protect one baby let alone their whole planet’s legacy!

As she struggled to regain control over her breathing, though, she felt something strange: someone was hugging her. She unthinkingly wrapped her arms around them in return, seeking more of the warmth.

Minutes passed with Kara sobbing into a shirt that smelled of dust and some kind of oil, while its wearer rubbed up and down her back in an unfamiliar but soothing gesture. Finally, she calmed down enough to pull back. Part of her was surprised and disappointed to realize it had been Jon who had held her. Somehow, she must have been subconsciously expecting it to be her father, or maybe Aunt Lara, who had come for her.

She determinedly buried her grief at the realization that neither of them would ever hug her again.

Once Jon noticed her attention was focused on them again, they tried to speak to her again, this time recognizably a question by the tone. While she didn’t quite recognize the words, she could guess what they were generally asking her: why was she here? What was wrong?

“Gone,” she whispered quietly, fighting off another round of tears. “They’re all gone.”

Obviously, they still couldn’t understand exactly what she was saying to them, but it seemed like the humans had gotten the gist of the reason for her upset. Or Martha just wanted a turn hugging her.

They picked Kara up and carried her up the stairs Kara had passed earlier as Martha showed her to the kitchen. Upstairs they pushed open one of the wooden doors that lined the upstairs hallway and flicked a switch on the wall just inside, revealing a room with a window and what Kara recognized as a bed concealed beneath a thick, padded cloth cover.

They set her down next to the bed, then pulled off the cover, folding it on the floor. Then, Martha pulled off another cover, this one a thin cloth layer, and gestured from Kara toward the bed.

Kara crawled onto the soft surface of the bed, ( _What was it made of? It didn’t move like the air-filled slabs preferred on Krypton_ ) and, following Martha’s pantomimed instructions, rested her head on the fluffy cloth capsule at the top of the bed. Before she could decide if she liked this custom of sleeping, Martha carefully replaced the thin cloth layer, sealing Kara into the bed.

For a moment, she almost panicked, but when she flailed a bit the cloth moved as well, telling her that the layer was not intended as a restraint. Perhaps it was meant to retain warmth then? The human bed certainly seemed better suited to the task than the Kryptonian version.

Martha stood next to the bed for a moment longer, presumably to make sure that Kara wasn’t about to freak out again. Then, they turned back toward the door, flipping a switch on the wall to turn the lights back off. They hesitated a moment longer at the door, then spoke one last time. This time the tone was very soft, and the only recognizable word was Kara’s name at the end.

With that, Martha left the room, closing the door behind them.

Kara listened as they walked back downstairs. The construction of the house made each step rather noisy; it sounded almost as loud as though Kara were still in Martha’s arms. A moment later, she heard them re-enter to the kitchen with Jon and prepare more food.

She started to doze off to the sound of them eating, but was jolted back awake when they mentioned her name.

It sounded like they had been talking for a while and had only just now started discussing her. But what were they saying? Not being able to understand their language was extremely frustrating.

Jon sounded upset, talking quickly and sharply. Kara thought they sounded scared again, but this time felt a bit different. She didn’t think they were afraid of her anymore, so maybe they were scared about something related to her presence?

Martha, on the other hand, seemed just as calm as they had before. Unfortunately, their words once again did not seem to be doing much to soothe Jon. They asked Martha several worried questions, to each of which Martha responded simply.

Listening closer, Kara thought that Martha might be worried too, but was better at controlling it. Or maybe they had just had more time to process than Jon, in the time they spent walking through the fields to and from Kara’s pod, and while they ate their sandwiches together earlier.

Eventually, their conversation slowed as they cleaned their eating utensils, and Kara didn’t fight when sleep tried to take hold of her once more.


	4. Hope

“Where are you going?” Martha asked Kara.

“To the cornfield,” Kara said, pointing. “To my ship.”

“Okay,” Martha said, followed by something else with enough unfamiliar words that she couldn’t understand.

The humans’ language, ‘English,’ was still proving tricky. She supposed she should be grateful it was coming much faster than Interlac had, but the fact that there was literally no one around to help translate or teach was frustrating. English was weird, as were several of the aspects of human life she had learned were encoded into their language.

Like gender, she considered as she stepped down from the porch: humans seemed to only have two sexes, compared to Kryptonians’ three, and each had only one accepted gender expression associated with it.  Apparently it had to do with their reproductive methods requiring precisely two participants, but whenever she tried to ask more about it, Martha and Jon’s faces turned pink and instead of answering they insisted they would explain it when she was older. What was so complicated about the contribution of reproductive genetic material to the birth pods, to be used with your mate’s to create a new life, engineered to take your place in society once you were retired?

Kara literally couldn’t recall when she had first learned about that, but it seemed the humans had different expectations about when it was appropriate for children to learn about adult matters. Kara had tried to explain to them that she already knew how children were made, but between her poor grasp of English and their strange avoidance of the issue no real progress had been made during that conversation. She had given up for now; it’s not like they didn’t have more immediate matters to discuss, anyway.

Like how to explain her presence. One of Jon and Martha’s friends was helping with that, filling out official forms (printed on dead tree fibers, of all things) to make her their adopted daughter. It was a sensible arrangement, she supposed, and she was grateful for their help, but it was still strange to live with a couple she hadn’t known even a week ago. However, she decided it was not much weirder than fleeing her dying planet, so she supposed she could live with it.

She had also been assigned a human gender by Jon and Martha. Neither of their genders really matched up with her own, but they looked at her features and hair and decided she looked more like a woman. Apparently, these physical characteristics were correlated to humans’ gender presentation. Huh. Human gender was weird.

The next issue was her age. Humans measured age in terms of revolutions of their planet about their star, but they were unable to convert that into meaningful units that Kara could measure her age in. And that didn’t even touch on the issue of comparative rates of aging. Eventually, Jon and Martha decide that she looks about eight Earth years old, and since any attempted comparison of the relative stages of child development between Kryptonians and humans was more frustrating than helpful, they decided to go with that.

She had also started learning the English writing system, which consisted of an entirely different set of characters than either Kryptonian or Interlac. Even worse, there were a couple of English letters shaped almost like Kryptonian symbols. They obviously represented very different concepts, but they left her feeling homesick all the same.

She turned back and waved at Martha, who was still sitting on the porch, as she entered the cornfield. After learning that the plants, called corn, were cultivated for the edible husks at the tops of the stalks, she had apologized once again for the destruction her ship had caused to their food source. Jon and Martha had waved her off, however, explaining out that they sold almost all of their harvest instead of eating it themselves. This had led to a discussion of how their economy functioned, but Kara hadn’t understood most of what they were saying, so they decided to shelve the topic until her English had improved.

She continued between the stalks, following a row toward where she remembered crashing.

Like her comprehension of English, her control over her yellow-sun abilities had improved greatly since her arrival on the planet. However, she still had to be careful of how much strength she used in each of her motions: not to push off too hard from the ground, not to squeeze the chairs too tightly, not to pull too hard on her clothes.

Martha and Jon had been working with her on behaving and moving like a human, but it felt impossible to judge her own strength relative to that of a regular human, muchless one of her own supposed age and size.

And then there were the other powers. How she could sometimes hear conversations from the next farm over, and pick out the tiny individual threads on Martha’s pants from another room. How she could smell the rust and fuel from Jon’s vehicle from inside the house. How she could hover without touching the ground at all if she concentrated. These were even harder to control than the others, but so far she had mostly been able to ignore them as long as she focused hard enough on what she was doing. Unfortunately, she suspected that would not work forever. But she would just have to figure out how to deal with that when it became an issue.

It wasn’t long before she reached her goal: the pod she had crashed in five days before. It was still sitting in its impact scar, surrounded by bent cornstalks. Luckily, Kara noted, most of the stalks outside of the gouge itself looked to be recovering from the shock of the impact. Still, it couldn’t hurt to apologize again when she got back. After all, they had helped her when she arrived, alone and with a damaged ship. The least she could do was try to make it up to them.

 _Speaking of making amends_ , Kara thought, eyeing the remains of her pod. _This wreck isn’t going to move out of the middle of their fields by itself._

First, she willed herself up off the ground and drifted forward until she was over the top of the hatch she had burst out of when she woke up. She bent down to firmly grip one side of the opening with both hands, and pulled upwards. The metal groaned as the ship shifted but didn’t leave the ground.

Growling, Kara tried again, this time focusing on floating herself higher and bringing the ship with her rather than picking up the pod as though it were a dropped toolbox in Jor El’s labs. After one more sharp upward tug, the ship gave another groan as Kara rose higher into the air, towing it beneath her. Once the bottom of the ship cleared the cornstalks, she slowed her upwards motion, instead directing herself toward the frame of Martha and Jon’s barn, now visible from her position in the air.

Despite the extra weight of the ship, she found herself approaching the side of the barn in what felt like no time at all. When she reached the door set into the base of the wall, she carefully shifted her grip on the ship to one hand so she could pull it open. It creaked to the side, revealing the empty cellar she had spoken with Jon about. The doorway was just big enough for her to maneuver the pod through. Once she was sure it was clear, she gently placed it down on the floor.

Kara lowered herself down into the cockpit. She guessed that the flight AI was unlikely to be useful at this point, between whatever malfunction had caused the crash and the impact itself. However, some of the systems might still be salvageable. And, she remembered, Jor and Lara had packed some equipment into the pod too, hadn’t they?

She set the ship’s computer system to reboot and run diagnostics, expecting it to take a while. In the meantime, she slid toward the storage hatch in the back of the passenger area to see what else survived her interstellar voyage.

As it turned out, there was a fair deal: several broken data crystals, more intact crystals, some folded robes, a couple of days of travel rations, and a sealed, flat case about the size of her head. She sorted the crystals into piles based on what she would be able to repair if she ever got access to a proper equipment and what to discard. A quick check of the diagnostics showed that it was only two-thirds finished, so she decided to see about opening the case.

The exterior of the case was smooth and silver, same as the outside of the ship, without any sign of its contents. It looked like many other cases she had seen in Jor and Lara’s labs back on Krypton, but she had never seen those opened and had no idea what they had contained. Upon closer inspection of one of the smaller sides of the container, Kara found a familiar locking mechanism, one which only required an authorized biosignature to open. Kara rested her thumb on the sensor, and after a moment the case slid apart.

First, Kara noticed the two crystals sitting on top. One was another data crystal, nearly indiscernible from the others she had been sorting through. The other was larger, more complex than the data crystals. In fact, it was something she had seen only once before: a seed crystal. It was used to generate a structure in isolated locations, whether in less-developed regions of Krypton, or on new, unexplored worlds. Before she could do more than question what sort of structure this particular seed crystal contained, she noticed the last item in the case.

It was her baby blanket. Bright red with thin yellow trim, and the emblem of the House of El emblazoned in yellow. She immediately snatched up the soft bundle and buried her face in it, inhaling deeply. The familiar scent left her reeling with homesickness, only returning to herself when she heard the chirping alert that the diagnostics had finished. She unfolded the blanket and wrapped it tightly around her shoulders before closing the empty case.

Kara crawled back to the console, quickly scrolling through the diagnostic information it projected. The flight data showed that the ship had been hit by debris before it made it out of Krypton’s solar system. Unfortunately, the data from the time immediately following the incident was corrupted until the AI was able to begin self-repairs, and she did not have the correct tools or training to comb through it. Luckily, it seemed to have only jostled the pod, but that had thrown off some of the initial trajectory calculations, and although the ship had managed to correct the route, it had not been able to properly alter the timing of the the landing procedures from the original flight plan.

Kara sighed. Lara had been in such a rush, programming AIs for interstellar travel for two different pods in such a short period of time. The flaw in the program only had minor consequences for Kara. However, for Kal…

She took a deep breath. It was possible that something had happened right after her ship’s launch, and her cousin’s pod had never even breached Krypton’s atmosphere. However, she couldn’t help thinking that this flaw in the program might have been why she couldn’t find him. If the timing of the landing procedures was too far off, the descent might have destroyed the pod and killed Kal on impact.

But she couldn’t worry about that now. Now, she had to figure out how to live here, and find a way keep an eye out for her cousin. For all she knew, Kal’s ship could have made it out of the system completely unscathed, and the alteration to her ship’s course might have added years to her journey to Sol-3 ( _if this really is Sol-3, and the AI didn’t mess the destination up too_ , she thought despairingly), and he had arrived long ago and grown up alone, with no knowledge of where he came from, much less of her existence.

But such speculation was ridiculous, so she returned her attention to her current task: checking the contents of the intact data crystals. She decided to examine the small one from the case first, as it seemed like the most important. The AI was able to scan it quickly, but instead of displaying a list of the contained data files as she had expected, a hologram immediately began to play on the console. A hologram of her family.

“Hello, Kara,” her mother said. And oh, it felt good to hear Kryptonian. “By the time you are hearing this message, you will have arrived on Sol 3 with your cousin. And...and we will all be dead.”

“Kara,” her father broke in. “According to Jor’s calculations, we have only days left, at most, and with how long it’s taking to cloak and shield your ships, and to program the AI…” he trailed off. “Well, we’ll be cutting it close. There might not even be time for us to finish saying goodbye properly. I’m sorry.”

“However,” Jor broke in, “we have taken measures so that the two of you will not be entirely without help on Sol 3.

“We programmed a seed crystal, packed in the same case as this data crystal. It will construct a stronghold for you, but you will want to place it carefully, far enough away from the humans to avoid contact with them. From the current data, the best candidates would be in the polar regions, where the abundance of ice will serve as camouflage for its crystals. Of course, the climate and geology may have changed during your journey, so you should take new scans using this ship and judge where it should be placed.”

“The AI in the stronghold will help you adjust to your new abilities, and adapt to the local technology to help you learn to blend in,” Lara spoke up, stepping forward. “It will also interface with human technology to gather information, and can evolve over time to adapt to local technological advances. I also left a fair amount of data on potential threats, both native and extraterrestrial, as well as files on any other events or artifacts you might encounter, on the data crystals I packed into your pods”

Then, there was a brief pause in the message. Kara took the moment to lament the pile of broken data crystals. As well as the implication that some of the data had been in Kal’s pod. Nothing she could do anything about though, so she just refocused on the message as it continued.

“I love you, my daughter,” her mother said. “Look after Kal, teach him about us, keep our memory alive. Hold your heads high, and represent the House of El and all of Krypton with pride. And remember that we will always be proud of you.”

The images of her family disappeared as the message ended, replaced by the list of files. But Kara didn’t see them. The full enormity of what had happened hit her then: not only was her planet, her home and family, gone, but she was also already failing her family. She had lost her little cousin. She was alone, and a failure.

She screamed.

The next thing she knew was the sound of Martha rushing into the cellar. But by that point Kara was finished with her outburst of emotion.

“Are you okay?”

Kara hesitated, then nodded.

“I am better now.”

She stood up, nodding as she passed a slightly stunned Martha, and ascended the stairs. She knew what she needed to do now. And she held most of the tools she would need to accomplish her goal. But first, she really needed to work on English and blending in. She had work to do.


End file.
